BT earbuds for replacing Pixel Buds Pro 2

[Artim96]

So I did buy Pixel Buds Pro 2 late last year because I thought they would be great. Turned out, they are utter garbage, I already have the second replacement unit and there are still just way too many issues to be willing to keep them. So I will have Google take them back and issue me a full refund.

 

Question is, what else should I buy?

 

My requirements:

• Battery life: at least 8 h without charging and ANC active, 48 h with case should be doable
• relatively thin, pocket friendly case, ideally Qi chargable
• findable/locatable with Android devices in general (not just e.g. with Samsung smartphones)
• good ANC and transparency mode
• wear detection/auto pause when taking them out
• speech detection, i.e. when I talk, music pauses (actually works quite well on the PBP 2)
• Multi point connection support
• Price max. 250 €, excluding taxes

Of course BT LE Audio support would be great, but the question is if just the support of the PBP 2 that's terrible or if the specification is just lacking (for all I know from Linux devs is that LE Audio support is difficult because devices can't really communicate what they support). If they also support locating with UWB, I also wouldn't mind.

 

Galaxy Buds 3 Pro do sound like a great deal, but locating (and I think some other features) are Samsung only, they aren't an option at all. I also already thought about the Sony WF-1000XM5, but on the other hand I do own the WH-1000XM4 and I was quite underwhelmed, especially since I had to factory reset them once a months for quite a few months because they just wouldn't turn on after the connection got quite flaky. Also they keep constantly enabling speech detection on their own which is extremely annoying.

 

Does someone have any recommendations that are available in Europe?

[ki8aras]

i dont know of anything that fits your range(cuz your budget was higher than mine) but the nothing ear(2024) is a good starting point

[Artim96]

18 hours ago, ki8aras said:

i dont know of anything that fits your range(cuz your budget was higher than mine) but the nothing ear(2024) is a good starting point

Thanks for the suggestion. But I don't see anything about locating them. Do they support being located at least with Google's find device service? Because that would actually be a hard requirement. I'm not buying any buds anymore that don't at least support that. Though of course it would be much preferable to be able to locate the buds individually too, even if you already lost connection. But it's questionable if any buds support that (maybe beyond AirPods).

[ki8aras]

On 4/30/2025 at 10:45 AM, Artim96 said:

Thanks for the suggestion. But I don't see anything about locating them. Do they support being located at least with Google's find device service? Because that would actually be a hard requirement. I'm not buying any buds anymore that don't at least support that. Though of course it would be much preferable to be able to locate the buds individually too, even if you already lost connection. But it's questionable if any buds support that (maybe beyond AirPods).

mine are still on the way so i don't know anything more than you sadly

[Artim96]

Let me know when you know more.